Biography
My research interests broadly lie in Generative AI, Embodied AI, Mobile Sensing, Human-centric Cyber-Physical Systems, Data Science,
and Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing for Smart Cities.
My work involves various techniques, such as large language models (LLMs), large sensor models (LSM), efficient machine learning,
unsupervised machine learning, cross-domain data fusion, and large-scale system optimization & deployment. I have been investigating
platforms across more than 300 cities on 2 continents with 2 billion E-commerce orders, 300 thousand vehicles, 500 thousand mobile
devices, and 500 million residents involved.
My technical contributions have led to more than 20 papers in premium CS venues, e.g., MobiCom, IMWUT/UbiComp, KDD, ACL, ICDE, VLDB, EMNLP, TKDE, TMC, SIGSPATIAL, CIKM, and SDM. Several of my algorithms and systems have been adopted by industry, generating measurable real-world impact at a national scale. I have served as TPC, PC member, or reviewer for top conferences and journals in Mobile Computing (Mobicom Artifact Evaluation, IMWUT/Ubicomp, TOSN) and Data Science and AI (NIPS, ICML, ICLR, TMLR, AISTATS, KDD, AAAI, EMNLP, WWW, DMLR, WSDM, SDM, ICWSM).
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I am currently looking for self-motivated PhD/MPhil/Visiting students and RAs, starting from Spring/Fall 2026 at HKUST(GZ). Both remote and in-person Research Interns are welcome and can start from Summer 2025.
If you are interested, please feel free to contact me at zhiqing.hong@rutgers.edu, with CV, transcript, and a few sentences highlighting anything you believe would strengthen your application!
Please note that while I carefully read all inquiry emails, due to the large volume, I may not be able to respond to each one individually. Thank you for your understanding.
Recent News
June 2025: One first-author paper about Nationwide Deployment of Sensor Foundation Model for Human Behavior Understanding accepted by ACM MobiCom.
June 2025: Invited talk about Generalizable Machine Learning for Human Behavior Understanding in Smart Cities at MIT.
May. 2025: One first-author paper about Efficient LLM for Human Activity Sensing accepted by KDD.
May. 2025: One co-author paper about LLM accepted by KDD.
May. 2025: One second-authored paper about LLM Uncertainty Calibration accepted by ACL 2025.
Feb. 2025: One first-author paper accepted by IEEE TMC.
Jan. 2025: Invited to serve as a reviewer for ICML 2025.
Jan. 2025: Invited to serve as a reviewer for Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR).
Dec. 2024: One co-authored paper about GNSS Mobile Sensing accepted by Percom 2025.
Dec. 2024: One second-authored paper about Generative AI for IoT Trajectory Generation accepted by SDM 2025.
Nov. 2024: Glad to be recognized as Top Reviewer for NIPS 2024.
Nov. 2024: One second-authored paper about LLMs for Spatial Language accepted by KDD 2025.
Oct. 2024: Invited talk about Generalizable Human Behavior Sensing at Ubicomp/FairComp 2024, Melbourn, Australia.
Oct. 2024: One co-authored paper about Interpreting
Foundation Language Models accepted by EMNLP 2024.
Sep. 2024: One co-authored paper accepted by SIGSPATIAL 2024.
Aug. 2024: Serve as reviewer for KDD 2025 and PC member for AAAI 2025.
July. 2024: Two co-authored papers accepted by CIKM 2024.
June. 2024: One second-authored paper accepted by VLDB 2024.
May. 2024: One paper accepted by TKDE.
May. 2024: Serve as Reviewer for NIPS 2024.
May. 2024: Serve as a PC member for ICWSM 2025.
May. 2024: Three co-authored papers accepted by KDD 2024.
Apr. 2024: Two papers accepted by IMWUT/Ubicomp'24.
Feb. 2024: Serve as a PC member for MobiCom 2024 Artifacts Evaluation.
Jan. 2024: Serve as a Reviewer for KDD 2024, WWW 2024.
Dec. 2023: Receive ICDM Travel Grant.
Dec. 2023: Serve as a Reviewer for IMWUT/Ubicomp'24.
Nov. 2023: Serve as a Reviewer for DMLR (first round of submission) and AISTATS 2024, PC member for LREC-COLING 2024.
Oct. 2023: Serve as a PC member for AAAI 2024.
Sep. 2023: Serve as a reviewer for TOSN, PC member for ICWSM 2024 and SDM 2024.
Aug. 2023: Serve as a PC member for WSDM 2024.
Aug. 2023: Two papers accepted by CIKM'23.
Aug. 2023: Serve as Reviewer for EMNLP 2023.
Feb. 2023: One co-authored paper accepted by ICDE'23.
Feb. 2023: Serve as Reviewer for KDD 2023.
Aug. 2022: Two papers accepted by SIGSPATIAL'22.
Aug. 2022: One paper accepted by CIKM'22.
Apr. 2022: Two papers accepted by Ubicomp'22.
Mar. 2021: Visit JD Logistics, AI and Data Science Group, hosted by Prof. Tian He.
Selected Publications
[MobiCom’25] DeployHAR: Experience Paper: Nationwide Human Behavior Sensing in Last-mile Delivery
Zhiqing Hong, Weibing Wang, Anlan Yu, Shuxin Zhong, Haotian Wang, Yi Ding, Tian He, Desheng Zhang
Highlight: Efficient Pretraining Model for Nationwide Deployment of on-device human behavior sensing, covering 500,000 devices in 366 cities
[KDD’25] LLM4HAR: Generalizable On-device Human Activity Recognition with Pretrained LLMs
Zhiqing Hong, Yiwei Song, Zelong Li, Anlan Yu, Shuxin Zhong, Yi Ding, Tian He, Desheng Zhang
Highlight: Efficient Large Language Model and Sensor Foundation Model for generalizable on-device human behavior sensing
[IMWUT/Ubicomp’24] CrossHAR: Generalizing Cross-dataset Human Activity Recognition via Hierarchical Self-Supervised Pretraining PDF
Zhiqing Hong, Zelong Li, Shuxin Zhong, Wenjun Lyv, Haotian Wang, Yi Ding, Tian He, and Desheng Zhang
Highlight: Sensor Foundation Model for generalizable human behavior sensing (Top 2 most read papers in Ubicomp, 2024 May Volumn)
[IMWUT/Ubicomp’24] SmallMap: Low-cost Community Road Map Sensing with Uncertain Delivery Behavior PDF
Zhiqing Hong, Haotian Wang, Yi Ding, Guang Wang, Tian He, and Desheng Zhang
Highlight: Generative AI for urban map generation (Algorithm adopted by industry partners)
[TKDE’24] Nationwide Behavior-Aware Coordinates Mining from Uncertain Delivery Events PDF
Zhiqing Hong, Guang Wang, Wenjun Lyu, Baoshen Guo, Yi Ding, Haotian Wang, Shuai Wang, Yunhuai Liu, and Desheng Zhang
Highlight: Nationwide Deployed Mobile Sensing System for location sensing (30 million+ locations across 366 cities)
